Archives

Archives

Sustainability

I’ve dreamt of having a butterfly garden since my daughter was in preschool. She just graduated from college, and it hasn’t happened yet. But it seems more urgent now than ever.

“Next year,” wrote the New York Times in a recent
article, “How to Attract Butterflies,” “the United States Fish and Wildlife
Service is expected to decide whether to include the butterfly on the
endangered species list.”

The Times advice was simple — plant more native
plants; avoid pesticides.

That same week, the Bellevue Botanical Garden had a lecture on butterflies and garden habitat, and the advice of the lecturer Julie O’Donald, a master gardener specializing in butterflies was the same, but she got more down in the weeds, so to speak. And some weeds as it turns out are just what butterflies need.

“The variety of native plants in a garden increases the diversity of butterflies that will be there,” O’Donald said. Natives like nettles and thistles are good butterfly habitat, she added. (However there was a caveat to that: native thistles are common in the mountains, but many other thistles are invasive.)

O’Donald ran through slides of the different types of
butterflies that inhabit the Puget Sound low regions and their host plants. She
also showed a slide of her own property bought many years ago as a largely
barren landscape. Now it’s quite lush.

“I cultivated nettles for butterfly caterpillars,” she said showing
a slide of nettles in a fenced area near a shed. “But they kept branching out
beyond the fence.” (They looked like prisoners longing to be free.) She finally
moved them when she and her husband painted the shed. “They were never happy
fenced up.”

“People talk about caterpillars becoming butterflies as
though they just go into a cocoon, slap on wings, and are good to go,” wrote
Jennifer Wright in a tweet that went viral and became a meme on Facebook.
“Caterpillars have to dissolve into a disgusting pile of goo to become
butterflies,” she went on. “So if you’re a mess wrapped up in blankets right
now, keep going.”

We love butterflies because they represent transformation,
freedom.

But before they get to that point they start off as creepy
crawlers, O’Donald reminded the crowd.

Butterflies have a short but specific life cycle. They lay
their eggs on the leaves or flowers of native plants; the eggs hatch into a
caterpillar. A caterpillar has no other means of getting food than eating the plant
that they’re on, said O’Donald. Plants, it turns out, are the adoptive parents
of butterfly young. Butterfly caterpillars just keep eating – with minimal
damage to the plant. They eat and grow and finally look for a good hiding place
to pupate and form a chrysalis.

The butterfly is the adult part of the lifecycle and hardier
than its young. It can eat and drink to a greater variety. It’s out there
hitting the nectar bars and looking for a mate and shelter for its young before
dying.

Some species of butterflies and flowers have evolved
together, and the extinction of one can means
the extinction of the other, which is what happened with the Atala butterfly,
said O’Donald. It was thought extinct when its host flower the Coontie – a native
to Florida – almost went extinct.
When plants were found and the flower came back, so too did the Atala
butterfly. The story is described in The Living Landscape by Rick Darke
and Douglas Tallamy.

Many plants and seeds are treated with chemicals, and O’Donald recommends buying only organic.

“How long will the toxicity last?” someone in the audience asked.

“Often two years and
the soil near the plant may also be contaminated,” said O’Donald.

Finding a good variety of native plants at nurseries is difficult, she admits, but “keep asking for them and someday they’ll get better about carrying them.” They can be found at native plant sales hosted a couple of times a year by the Washington Native Plant Society.

One plant to pass over at nurseries is the butterfly bush.
Despite its name, it’s not good for butterflies. (It’s been described as junk
food for butterflies.) O’Donald explained why, “The butterfly bush only
supplies nectar. It doesn’t provide shelter or food for butterfly caterpillars.
And it spreads into natural areas where it competes with native plants.”

Habitat for butterflies doesn’t have to be large. Even a few
plants on a balcony will create havens and resting places for butterflies to
land, said O’Donald.

Butterflies are iconic. We see them in advertising, in art,
in design, on book covers, in display windows, and in memes. You almost can’t
go a day without seeing one. They’re everywhere, those butterflies, and
nowhere. An actual butterfly is a rare
find.

O’Donald’s advice — just start planting.

“Start small,” she says, “While you’re busy doing other
things these plants will take off.”

And so will actual butterflies.

Julie O’Donald’s butterfly garden with asters and autumn helenium in the foreground and apple trees and grapevines beyond.Free and happy nettles.

Resources for creating a butterfly garden and learning more about butterflies:

As a 20-year inhabitant of Eastlake, the roar of seaplanes
flying overhead has become a familiar and even comforting sound. But emerging technology could make those overflights
much quieter, and a lot more sustainable.

Electric airplanes powered by batteries are beginning to
appear. Harbour Air, which partners with
our own Kenmore Air on daily flights between Seattle and Vancouver, B.C.,
announced plans to convert
its fleet to all electric. With 37
planes, Vancouver-based Harbour is the largest seaplane-alone airline in North
America, and aims to become the first all-electric airline of any type in the
world.

The company is starting test flights this year by converting
a De Havilland DHC-2 Beaver, familiar to Lake Union residents as the smaller, and to my
experience noisier, planes flown by Kenmore. The aim is to gain approval
of aviation regulators in the U.S. and Canada, and begin passenger service by
2021. Batteries will provide 100 miles range, or about 60 minutes flight time,
leaving a reserve for Harbour’s average 30-minute flight time.

Electrified aviation in development comes in forms from personal to larger commuter aircraft by companies including Boeing and JetBlue, and promises to reduce air pollution and climate-twisting carbon pollution, not to mention sound pollution. Vancouver and Seattle, mostly hydropowered, offer some of the lowest-carbon electricity on Earth. Harbour already claims carbon neutrality, based on offset purchases since 2007.

Redmond-based
electrified aviation company MagniX will supply the electrical system.
“Batteries remain the limiting factor for electrical propulsion in aviation,
said Roei Ganzarski, MagniX’s CEO and a former Boeing executive,” Bloomberg reports. “‘By 2025, 1,000 miles
is going to be easily done,’ Ganzarski said, based on the evolution of current
battery technologies. ‘I’m not saying 5,000 miles, but 1,000 miles, easily. I
don’t think that’s far-fetched or a pie-in-the-sky thing.”

Electrek, a site devoted to electrified transportation
concludes, “Converting seaplanes seems like a good fit, and the two companies
also seem to have found a good sweet spot in flight range. Converting all of
Harbour Air’s ‘seaplanes into ePlanes’ isn’t going to happen overnight, but
even so, this is a milestone.”

Eastlake
seaplane historian Jules James has some skepticism. “My
feeling is it is technically feasible, but not financially. They can get
30 minutes of paid flying time on one charge. Each charge takes an
hour. Dock space is precious. I can’t have a seaplane fueling
up for an hour on a busy day.”

My hit, having worked professionally studying alternative vehicle fuels including electricity, hydrogen and biofuels, is that battery technology is rapidly improving and coming down in price. Fueling with voltage will be cheaper, and upfront costs can do nothing but come down. Fast charging could solve the problem Jules cites. Electricity is not going to power jetliners to Europe anytime soon. But for smaller planes up to intercity commuter aircraft on the Horizon Air level, electricity is the future. It’s not a matter of if, but when.

Patrick Mazza

Seaplane sketch by Karen Berry

I met Andrea (Andie) Ptak, five years ago in a class for
bloggers where I learned, unrelated to the class, (but maybe the most useful
thing to come out of it) that she had converted her yard into a native plant
garden and certified backyard habitat.

When I drove up to Andie’s house in South Seattle last Saturday for an interview in honor of Native Plant Appreciation Week, this week, she was standing outside surveying her work.

Her front yard was abuzz with low flying bees working the Lithodora. “It’s not native but the bees like it,” says Andie who is in her mid-sixties. “I leave the dandelions alone, at least until there are more flowering plants,” she adds, noting the few dandelions that spotted the yard. (Dandelions are after all a native, and the bees first food coming out of hibernation.)

Andie is talking a mile a minute pointing out all the natives – native violets, native bleeding hearts, native irises, more than I can quickly write down. All these plants I’ve heard and seen pictures of but never been able to find.

“It’s very hard to find natives at nurseries,” Andie says, “You have to wait for the native plant sales.”

And those only happen a couple of times a year.

I know. I’ve been trying to cultivate a backyard habitat since my daughter was in preschool. A butterfly garden sounded good; it would take food (native plants), water and shelter, but it never went anywhere.

The sales are daunting. Full of pots with straggly bits of
green in them – it’s hard to know what you’re buying or what to do with it
unless you’re an expert.

And Andie is. She’s a Certified Master Urban Naturalist, a
titled she earned in 2015 through an intensive 6-month program at Seward Park
offered by the Audubon Society. Completion required doing a major project, and
hers was a Native Plant Super Saturday that she organized at the park.

Next, we head to her back yard which is about six times as
large as the front. Both were just pure grass she tells me, when she and her
husband Aaron bought the place. Not even a tree. Now there are native and
fruit-bearing trees and bushes throughout. Andie’s yard is about half native,
half non-native. If the non-natives are not invasive, they’re fine. About a
third of the back yard is covered in wood chips and serves as a dog run for their
two Golden Retrievers, Paprika and Cayenne, “The Spice Girls.”

The dogs follow us into the back yard living up to their
names. Paprika, the older dog, is mellow and sweet, and Cayenne, about seven
months, is excitably jumping on me almost every chance she can get, which is flattering.
Andie keeps warning her off, finally calling Aaron to take her away.

“Maybe you should have called her Cinnamon,” I offer.

The garden in back has meandering paths, with bird baths, yard
art, a trellis enclosed patio, and other seating areas. It’s just starting to
come into bloom. There are more natives back here from flower to fern to ground
cover to tree. Hidden within this garden is a loosely fenced-in food garden
with large blueberry bushes, a ground cultivated for planting vegetables, and
another area with raspberry canes.

Why native? So many reasons, Andie says, they support the
pollinators. That’s a big one as she writes in her blog, “As our population
grows, mankind encroaches on the natural world, pushing out species of both
plants and animals—some to the state of extinction. There’s not a lot I can do
personally to save the tiger or polar bear, but I can make sure that area
songbirds have plenty of food and a place to nest, and that bees
and butterflies have sources for nectar.”

Native plants also conserve water, she adds, because they’re
acclimated to our climate of wet winters and dry summers. And they’re
beautiful. “They’re not as showy as the non-natives,” she admits, “and they’re
hard to cultivate in pots, and that’s likely why they’re hard to find at the
nurseries.”

They’re also not as straggly as I feared. Her natives are thick, growing in dense
clusters. Andie’s yard will be lush come summer. They spread and reseed
themselves, says Andie. She also helps them along by dividing and replanting. What
started as just a couple of small pots picked up at a native plant sale has
spread to cover nearly every inch of her yard.

Native plants are low maintenance once established, which is
what attracted me to them, but they’re also slow to grow.

I started by planting a few natives in one bare spot in my
yard, throwing water on them regularly as they took root. But I never really had time to cultivate them.
Sometimes years would go by with barely a weed being pulled. Now, these many
years later (my daughter is about to graduate from college), they’ve taken off.
They’re crowding each other out. The Tall Oregon Grape, Low Oregon Grape, Inside-out
Flower, Sword Fern, Columbine, Kinnikinnik, a Mock Orange, which everyone
loves, and a Red-Flowering Current. Only the hardy Salal didn’t take. Go
figure.

The Red-Flowering Current went from being a couple of feet
tall to over six feet and almost as wide. Recently trudging home from work, I
came upon it in bloom spilling forth pinkish red blossoms that lifted my
spirits. Then if that wasn’t enough a hummingbird was zipping around them.

Seeing Andie’s garden, I’m inspired. Maybe a backyard
habitat is still within reach.

Nodding toward the non-natives as I’m leaving, Andie tosses out why she keeps them with the natives, summing up what I’m looking for in a garden, “You can live here if I don’t have to do too much for you.”

South Lake Union is home to forward-thinking environmental design. One of the most innovative design features, a form of green infrastructure, is what’s known as the Swale on Yale. It’s two swales actually (one in the 400 block of Yale St. and the other parallel to it on Pontius St.), and it’s about to swell to two more (just south of both locations in the 300 block of both streets).

The swales give South Lake Union a bit of moorland feel, but
beyond the aesthetics these stretches of grassland are working to treat Capitol
Hill storm water roadway runoff before it reaches Lake Union.

Technically the swales are known as the Capitol Hill Water
Quality Project, a public private collaboration between the city of Seattle and
Vulcan Real Estate; KPFF Consulting Engineers also played a key role.

“When the swales were planned (in the early 2000s),” wrote
Jason Sharpley of Seattle Public Utilities, in an email exchange, “there were no
regional scale biofiltration swales treating stormwater from ultra-urban
roadways that we were able to find.”

“Typically, swales were used on a more limited, roadway
scale to treat and convey stormwater runoff from the adjacent roadway.”

The project was so unique that the Seattle Design Commission
created a special award, an “In
the Works “ Excellence Award, that they won
in 2011. The swales came online in 2015.

Working swale on the 400 block of Pontius St.

“Since completing the first pair of swales there has been a
lot of interest and there may be new systems in other cities.”

Seattle’s steep slopes helped propel the innovation. “We
have the right topography for this,” says Dave Schwartz of KPFF Consulting
Engineers. The slopes make it easier to divert water to where you want it,
which makes cleaning it easier too. And that’s what the swales do, filter and
clean. They’re made up of densely planted grasses, “a mixture of sedges, which
have edges, and rushes, which are round,” says Schwartz describing his mnemonic
means of distinguishing them.

They clean roadway runoff that “includes everything that you see, and don’t see, that is on the roadway,” says Sharpley. “This includes brake dust from cars that carries copper, dissolved metals from galvanized fences, and bacteria from wildlife and pet waste. The swales and pretreatment that make up the Swale on Yale system do a good job of removing a significant portion of the pollutants.”

The Swale on Yale couldn’t have been done without developer
help, says Schwartz, stressing the huge role that Vulcan Real Estate played in
making the public private partnership happen. Vulcan provided technical and
profession assistance along with contributing about $1.3 million toward design
and construction. Most critically they provided the easement to the city.
Developers are playing key roles in creating environmental projects that
provide a greater good, says Schwartz, noting another public private project
under the Aurora Bridge, rain
gardens catching bridge water runoff. “Not all try to just make money and
destroy the world,” he added.

But even before the water reaches the swales it’s run
through a diversion tank that uses centrifugal force to flush out “floatables,”
a nice name for trash such as cups, straws, and cigarette butts.

From the diversion tank, controlled amounts of water are
released into the swales evenly so as not to overflow them and to keep their
integrity intact.

The swales then drain into a discharge pipe and the water is
released to the lake. “The water is not
drinkable,” says Sharpley, “but significantly cleaner than when it entered the
swale.”

New swale plantings on the 300 block of Pontius St.

The two new swales will come online once the plants mature.
For now they look like woven works of art running between the sidewalk and
roadway. Once they are put to work, the system will be able to treat the full
design flow of 7.2 cubic feet of water per second, which is more than 3,000
gallons a minute. The older swales treat half that capacity today. The full
swale build-out will treat 435 acres of storm water runoff from Capitol Hill’s
630-acre basin.

The Swale on Yale captures the dirtiest water from both small storms and the early runoff from larger storms. Thanks to this pioneering green infrastructure, Lake Union is much cleaner than it otherwise would be and could become cleaner still with even more projects like the Swale on Yale.

The Swale on Yale — 400 block, with city workers maintaining it.

After a couple of years of construction at Tenth Avenue and Roanoke St., the new Firehouse 22 opened its doors to the public Saturday afternoon for two hours, and although it was an ordinary gray and misty day, it was like a rare snow day seeing so many neighbors out walking to and from the event.

The brutalist front of the new firehouse conceals a friendly, open, comfortable, light-filled interior. The firehouse is like a home away from home for the firefighters, and after spending two years camped out in trailers under I-5 in Eastlake, a welcome home it is.

The entire structure is integrated with many sustainability elements including two cisterns that capture non-potable water that is filtered to use for washing fire trucks, flushing toilets, and watering landscaping. Solar panels provide about 16 percent of the station’s energy needs. The interior relies on a lot of natural light which is good for well-being. And it’s quiet despite being on a busy street; even with a crowd inside it felt calm. The bunks, which were not open to the public, were on the side of the building facing Roanoke. That side with a fortress front likely provides great sound proofing for resting.

There are amenities at the station that you’d find in some of Seattle’s newer apartment buildings and condos, but of a more modest scale: an exercise room and media room with four overstuffed recliners squeezed in.

Kids enjoy the exercise room.

The recliners were also a hit although you can’t tell that here.

There’s a spacious kitchen with lots of individual cupboards for the rotating staff, two large stainless-steel refrigerators, and an industrial gas stove; there’s an outdoor covered deck with black iron table and four chairs and a large grill. Sometimes, walking home from work along Roanoke in the evening I can get a whiff of something good cooking on the other side.

Kitchen

Alfresco dining area with grill in background.

Unlike home it has a disinfecting wash room, large equipment rooms, and other reminders of dangerous work firefighters face.

One of the most interesting design features is an open central stairway that forms a large X using two stairwells. Reminding me of the Fidler on the Roof song of wanting a stairway that goes up and another one that goes down. This place has them (although not one just for show).

Looking at one leg of the X forming stairway.

The grand stairway leads to a second floor that overlooks the barn for the fire trucks, which were cleared out that Saturday to create space for displays and kids’ activities. Outside there was a fire truck and emergency response truck that kids and adults were happily exploring.

The stairway leads to views of the barn.

One thing the structure doesn’t have however is a fire pole. “Not really safe,” explained the fireman I talked to. Many old stations do have them, he said, and use them though. But the two staircases allow for quick access to the fire trucks. Besides there are only four firefighters on duty at a time, so if one should get hurt sliding down a pole that would not be good.

Outside, and on display all the time, is the artwork sculpture, Drop of Life. The sculpture is made from fire hoses and their parts and really comes into its own at night when you can clearly see the LED lights reflecting off it, like an aurora. The artist Oliver Hess spent time with the firefighters to come up with ideas for artwork. He was struck by the varying intensities of energy at a firehouse and how things changed with the calls that came in. As one representative explained, it was always when someone was about to take a shower or start some other project that a call would come. Most are aid calls and then the rarer fire, she added. He mapped that activity into an algorithm for the light show that changes unpredictably but matches the feel of life in the firehouse from calm to strikingly intense.

“Drop of Life” sculpture as seen at night

“It was very memorable to me when visiting the fire station that there was a palpable anxiety and excitement about getting a call to action,” he wrote in his artist statement. “There was a feeling of superstition about the causal relationships between the way the firefighters spent their time and how likely it was that they would be called out to face danger and save lives.”

One thing that the artwork might also make you think about is the hose tower just beyond it rising over the building, a simple sustainable feature to air out and dry the hoses, but a towering reminder of the building’s basic purpose.

The best piece of 2016 Seattle architecture is located near Lake Union and is, according to former Seattle Times architecture critic, Mark Hinshaw, writing for Crosscut, “a total dump.”

He’s talking of course about the new replacement transfer station on North 34th Street in Wallingford, a place that since 1966 people took their hard-to-dispose-of trash.

The new transfer station didn’t appear to be an architectural winner right away. It sort of came from behind, a long shot if you will. But when completed it showed itself as “sleek, serene and sophisticated,… it would make a foreign embassy envious,” writes Hinshaw, and it hasn’t lost its utilitarian mission looking like “a cross between a diplomatic compound in Eastern Europe and a border entry into Canada.”

Unlike Hinshaw, I have rather fond memories of the old transfer station, not that it would be my first choice of destination. It was a chore having to go there and boring waiting in line, but if felt cathartic, throwing things into the pits once we arrived, watching living rooms unfold and disappear before your eyes. A couch, a chair, a lamp, a rug, even TVs back then, and the scene would disappear, churning, as more items poured in. I’m not so sure the new transfer station will offer quite that same experience…

It was closed the day we visited, New Year’s Day. “Let’s go see 2016’s best architecture,” I suggested to my husband. But even closed there was a lot to see – a bright new playground across the street with half a dozen kids running through the treehouse/slide; an adult playground, so to speak, around the parameter of the station, made up of about seven exercise stations that are part of the landscape; a basketball court; and a court yard with benches directly across the street from Essential Bakery, on Woodlawn, creating additional outdoor seating for the cafe. Then along 34th toward Stoneway more benches, this time designed into the building, accenting the sidewalk with views of both inside the building and the street. And to top it all off there is the public artwork, RECLAIMED by Jean Shin, made from the rebar of the old structure and capturing the soul of the place as its plaque describes, “….RECLAIMED highlights the potential of waste material to be reimagined into a vibrant second life within the community, and echoes the sustainable principle of reuse at the transfer station….”

The new building “may not be truly ‘civic’ but it is entirely civil to its neighbors,” writes Hinshaw.

It’s much less of a chore to come to, which is probably just what the designers, Mahlum, had in mind, and more of a treat.

The ages 5 to 12 playground across the street from the new transfer station

The Blue Heron just happened to come across a group of people burrowing up from the new U.W. Link light rail station for a tour of the sustainability features of the U.W. campus a sunny day last month in April, for Earth Month.

Burke Gilman Trail closed but should open sometime in June 2016.

The group’s first stop was at the ravaged Burke Gilman trail which has been in detour mode for months, feels like years now, but for a good cause; the segment between 15th Avenue and Rainier Vista is being widened from the current 12-to-16 foot lane to 24 feet and being made into separate pathways for bicyclists and pedestrians. It will be completed in July.

A state-of-the-art Life Sciences Building is going in at this site across from the Medical Center where the U.W.’s first urban farm once was. The botany greenhouse will also be replaced.

Just beyond that overlooking NE Pacific St., the U.W.’s first urban farm is being demolished to make way for a state of the art, 169,000 square foot Life Sciences Building to be home to the Biology Department. Forget images of isolated, lonely lab work; the building will be conducive to “’unexpected synergies’” to promote “entrepreneurial and interdisciplinary” approaches “to teaching and conducting research,” says the website. Adjacent to the new building, a 20,000 square foot biology greenhouse will replace the 67-year-old botany greenhouse. (Recently Huskies helped move plants to new homes.)

The building’s south side will have fins to reduce glare and provide shading. Those will be embedded with solar panels, which turn out to no more costly than aluminum save for the electrical wiring. “Even though the solar panels will not be optimally placed to generate solar power,” wrote tour leader Chris Toman in an email follow-up, “the cost to install them is on par with installing more traditional materials and will offset some of the buildings energy needs.“

There are also plans to reuse lab water to irrigate the greenhouse although that is dependent on funding.

All the new U.W. buildings are LEED silver, some gold. Not just construction but also transportation is going green. The university has 260 flexible-fuel vehicles in it 712-vehicle fleet. It will have a total of 42 electric cars by June 2016. There are 41 EV charging stations around campus, with five of those available for public use.

Bike racks double as landscaping fencing.

About 4,000 of the smart U.W. students bike to class rain or shine every day making use of 650 bike lockers and numerous bike racks around campus.

Communicating with high tech trash, recycling and compost cans.

Even the trash cans are smart. Once the Big Belly Solar waste receptacles are full they text maintenance staff to come empty them.

Make way for ducklings!

Sustainability features extend to the U.W.’s wildlife too – no not parties – ducks, the feathered kind that swim in the spectacular Drumheller Fountain. The fountain has a duck ramp so that baby ducks can get out. This used to be a problem as the ducklings couldn’t fly or scale the fountain’s steep sides. Now they have safe passage.

Home of a blue heron.

Just southwest of the fountain, hidden in a patch of tall trees known as Island Grove, Blue Herons have been nesting since 2007. As the tour group stood around peering up at the nests high in the trees, one flew in, gliding through the tree tops, circling and disappearing among the branches. The photographer was so captivated, she failed to take a picture, knowing there wouldn’t be time, instead watching as the bird appeared and was gone. “Sweet!” someone said. And another remarked to Chris, “You planned that well.”

Bonus photo: a Secret Garden at the U.W. Hint: it is near the fountain.

The climate hour is late, too late for anything but the most sweeping and fundamental efforts to break free from fossil fuels. Lying oil companies have skewed our political system, blocking effective response for over 25 years. Now the Earth’s climate is severely twisting under the effects of fossil fuel carbon pollution. Never has the disruption been more visible than in recent months.

This is the first of a series of blog posts leading up the largest direct actions against the fossil fuel industry in history. From May 4-16 Break Free, staged by the global 350.org network and other groups, will mount actions at six U.S. locations and in 10 other countries around the world. Civil disobedience will play a leading role. That will definitely be the case for the Pacific Northwest action, taking place from May 13-15 at oil refineries in Anacortes, Washington and organized by a broad coalition of mainly grassroots groups and collectives from around the Northwest.

After many years of political system failure, we can rely only on a massive people power wave capable of making demands for fundamental and rapid system change. A political system corrupted by the greatest series of corporate crimes in history leaves no other option.

Investigative journalists recently uncovered how oil companies systemically lied about climate disruption, knowing the monstrous implications of their deceits. Journalists documented that Exxon scientists researched fossil-fuel-driven climate disruption in the 1970s and 1980s, and accurately predicted the outcomes. These revelations are now fueling fraud investigations by 20 state attorneys general across the country.

Exxon and its cohort of oil companies knew exactly what they were doing when in the late 1980s they began funding disinformation campaigns meant to cast doubt on climate science and stop regulations that would have reduced carbon pollution. Their tragic success already spells the death of millions of people and extinction of uncounted species. It is the absolutely pinnacle example of how powerful corporate institutions driven by the imperative to preserve profit and the value of capital assets will take our planet down if we let them.

Thus, to break free from fossil fuels, we need to break free from the institutional corruption that pervades our society, and prevents meaningful progress. To paraphrase John Lennon, we need to free our minds from the institutions that have held back our imagination of what this society could be if we decided to make a world fit for our children.

Make no mistake. Our generation is well on the way to leaving a legacy of utter desolation. Severe climate disruption is already upon us. We need to understand what this means. Climate is an abstract word, and that is part of the challenge in drawing people to respond to it. Climate is in essence the pattern of wind and ocean currents that drive weather patterns around the globe. It hits home in the amount and intensity of rain and snow a region receives, or does not, as well as extremes of heat and cold, and the way they lock in for extended periods. Wind and ocean currents are becoming seriously twisted.

This is evidenced by the Pacific Ocean’s third monster El Nino in 34 years, affecting weather patterns across the Earth, and by warm winds blowing over the Arctic leaving the March 2016 maximum Arctic Ocean icepack tied for 2015 as the lowest ever recorded. Going into melt season, this could set up record low ice cover this summer, with expanded patches of blue water soaking solar heat that white ice would otherwise repel into space. Heating of the Arctic is likely slowing and stalling the jet stream, one of the world’s major weather generators, resulting in massive deluges and snowstorms in some places, scorching heat and drought in others. And, as much feared, it is now documented that Greenland icecap meltwater is interfering with North Atlantic currents that transport warm water from the tropics. While the world is seeing record warmth, the North Atlantic is witnessing record cold. The cold-warm contrast is already fueling more intense storms.

Underscoring the emergence of a climate emergency, scientific agencies reported that this January and February were by far the hottest ever recorded. It was the largest spike over average temperatures on record. At 1.35° Celsius, reported by NASA, it came perilously close to the 1.5°C limit set as an aspirational goal by the recent Paris climate summit, and regarded by many scientists as an absolute limit to prevent runaway climate catastrophe. In fact, with climate-twisting carbon emissions at a record, we are well on the way to a 4°C increase as early as this century. This represents a massive crime against climate justice.

“As the planet warms, climatic conditions, heat and other weather extremes which occur once in hundreds of years, if ever, and considered highly unusual or unprecedented today would become the ‘new climate normal’ as we approach 4°C – a frightening world of increased risks and global instability,” the World Bank recently reported. “The consequences for development would be severe as crop yields decline, water resources change, diseases move into new ranges, and sea levels rise. Ending poverty, increasing global prosperity and reducing global inequality, already difficult, will be much harder with 2°C warming, but at 4°C there is serious doubt whether these goals can be achieved at all.”

The human face of this could be seen when the most powerful storm to make landfall in Southern Hemisphere history plowed into Fiji February 20, killing 42 and destroying the homes of 62,000. At seven percent of the nation’s population, that would equate to 23 million Americans being suddenly driven from their homes. Category 5 Typhoon Winston, with winds up to 185 mph, was the second most powerful tropical cyclone to hit land in the planet’s history after Typhoon Haiyan that devastated the Philippines in 2013. These storms underscore the tragic fact that the fossil fuel consumption, mostly by the richer countries, is taking from poor people of color what little they have.

In the face of all this, when the world should be taking desperate measures to reduce carbon emissions, 2015 saw record growth in atmospheric carbon dioxide levels. The Titanic is headed toward the iceberg and the captain is ordering the boilers stoked to speed the ship toward its destination.

The climate emergency is now staring us in the face, as is the bankruptcy of politics as usual. We must break free from fossil fuels, and relentlessly drive for a rapid and just transition to 100% renewable energy. The next post will detail how we must undertake this energy revolution, which is well within our grasp.

This is all that Typhoon Winston, the most powerful landfalling storm in Southern Hemisphere history, left Kalisi and her three-year-old son, Tuvosa, when it hit Fiji Feb. 20. Climate disruption created by the richest nations is hitting the poorest nations hardest. This compels us in the global North to rise up for climate justice. Photo Courtesy Reuters/Unicef-Sokhin

Washington state climate advocates are aiming at a political act never before achieved on this planet, enacting a state-level price on carbon pollution by popular vote.

Carbon Washington volunteers are on the streets seeking signatures to place I-732 on the November 2016 ballot. It would set a $25-per-ton carbon tax. The Alliance for Jobs and Clean Energy is exploring a carbon-pricing measure for that ballot, likely by a cap-and-trade similar to California’s.

So far the only U.S. electorate that has voted to tax its own carbon pollution is at a city level, that of the uber-liberal enclave of Boulder, Colorado. Residents in 2006 voted to tax themselves an average of $21 annually, and renewed it in 2012. In 2010 Californians voted down an initiative to repeal their cap-and-trade. But to this date, none of the many state, province or national carbon pricing systems has been enacted at the ballot box. The path to this date has been through legislative and executive decision-making.

Washington state would seem prime turf to set a precedent. Wildfires are scorching hundreds of square miles and forcing evacuation of whole towns. Record drought threatens water supplies. Salmon are dying by the hundreds of thousands in overheated streams. Carbon-acidified waters are driving out the shellfish industry. The state is on the climate chaos frontlines.

Nonetheless, passage of any measure at a statewide level is an obstacle-laden proposition. A tsunami of opposition funding from the fossil fuel industry and its allies will greet any initiative. (It would be a good time to own a TV station in one of the state’s major metros.) It is also famously difficult to gain voter approval for measures that impose new taxes or fees, even when most voters are not directly affected, as the 2010 two-to-one whomping of I-1098’s income tax on upscale incomes demonstrated. State voters instead have a record of voting for tax cuts, as the successes of initiative entrepreneur Tim Eyman have shown. (Though not so successful in recent years, Eyman is returning with another tax limiting measure this fall if it survives court challenges.)

CLIMATE FORCES DIVIDED

If these obstacles were not tough enough, a fractious politics creates additional hurdles. The Alliance and CarbonWA are in public and messy tensions with each other. Attempting an unprecedented political act against industry opposition and voter skepticism would seem at a minimum to require unity among climate advocates. Today climate forces are divided. This post looks at the roots of the struggle, tracks its unfolding chronology over recent months, and seeks to analyze what it means for ballot box success. There is a lot of ground to cover, so please bear with a longer-than-usual post.

The split tracks back to the failure of the federal climate legislation campaign in 2010. Very much an effort by environmental NGOs to bring the power of influential constituencies such as business to bear, the federal effort ended in dismal failure. But by that point a more grassroots-oriented climate movement was starting to emerge. Direct action against expansion of pipelines and other fossil fuel infrastructure was one aspect. Another was organizing for a carbon tax by citizens skeptical of the carbon cap-and-trade system proposed in the federal bill.

In Washington economist Yoram Bauman spearheaded creation of CarbonWA, which began pushing toward a carbon tax initiative. This set up tensions with Climate Solutions and allied groups leading federal and state legislative efforts. Climate Solutions was pursuing what it called the West Coast Agenda, passage of cap-and-trade through Washington and Oregon statehouses as a way of kickstarting progress back to Congress at some point. It would take a central role in forming and organizing the Alliance in early 2015 as the Washington vehicle to carry out the Agenda.

After talking about an initiative for several years CarbonWA was urgent to move. Losing patience with a legislative process that blocked Gov. Jay Inslee’s cap-and-trade in the 2015 legislature, the group submitted I-732 as an initiative to the legislature. Group leaders say they would have pulled the initiative if the legislature had moved on the Inslee bill, even if it was not their preferred policy design. Now CarbonWA aims to return to the legislature in January with 264,000 qualified signatures to secure placement in the 2016 general election. At this writing the campaign has garnered over 100,000, despite opposition and potential ballot measure competition from the Alliance.

“ . . . a powerful coalition that includes the state’s major green and labor groups is trying to squash the effort,” Seattle Times political reporter Jim Brunner reported in a July 26 Sunday edition story bannered across the front page, “Carbon-tax initiative divides environmentalists.” Describing CarbonWA as “scrappy, grass-roots” and “an upstart, eclectic bunch,” Brunner reported, “I-732 backers say they’ve waited long enough for action from the political establishment and are pushing ahead.” He quoted Bauman, “They say that there might be another measure. I feel like some of those folks have been saying that for years.”

Indeed, an Aug. 10 Seattle Times op-ed by Alliance leaders couched the ballot prospect. “Throughout the summer, the alliance will continue to explore possible climate ballot measures with the goal to file and qualify an initiative to the people in 2016,” they wrote.

Cascadia Planet broke the story about environmental group efforts against I-732 back in April. A few weeks later tensions between the Alliance and CarbonWA appeared to ease with a joint statement, “. . . we are not currently endorsing each other’s efforts. But we have no objections to individuals or groups supporting or working with either or both groups (or making a joint endorsement). We respect each other’s efforts to build a strong movement for climate action and will stay in close contact in the months ahead as the alliance completes its research work and as Carbon Washington moves forward with its signature-gathering campaign for I-732.”

Despite that seeming accord, the rift between the groups re-emerged with a June 12 memo signed by 23 members of the the Alliance Steering Committee. It raised objections that could not be interpreted in any other way than as an effort to discourage I-732 signature gathering. “. . . after extensive evaluation the alliance has determined we will no longer consider supporting its Initiative . . . As stated in the attached memorandum, recent polling unfortunately shows that I-732 is not winnable, and confirms that running multiple climate ballot measures in 2016 ensures across-the-board defeat.”

Pollsters reported, “just 39 percent of Washington voters back Initiative 732 when read the full and final language of the ballot question . . .The prospects for Initiative 732 look grim.” CarbonWA was presented with the results. Bauman’s response was, “The alliance thinks the most important result from the poll they conducted last month is that initial support for the Carbon Washington proposal is under 40% (i.e., 39%); Carbon Washington thinks the most important result from that poll is that support climbs to over 60% (61% Yes, 35% No, 4% Undecided) when the proposal is explained in simple language.”

Other analysis from the pollsters raises continued questions about whether the Alliance will go ahead with its own initiative: “Our survey explored a number of other potential ballot measure concepts, all of which started with more support than Initiative 732 – with some topping fifty and even sixty percent – though all were similarly impacted by negative messaging . . . However, further research should help to identify an alternative ballot measure concept with sufficient initial support and durability in the face of messaging to win voter approval in 2016.”

That a ballot concept considered to be viable has not yet emerged is not due to lack of polling. Public opinion researchers have been testing policy designs on likely voters for several years.

In important ways the governor has already taken matters into his own hands. He issued a July 28 order for a rulemaking to impose a carbon cap by regulation, he hopes by next summer. Based on existing state law for clean air protection, it requires no additional legislative action, though a court challenge is likely. The Department of Ecology proceeding is geared to create a system of carbon permits that polluters could trade among themselves. Though that market may de facto set its own price, a pricing system that brings carbon revenues into state coffers will require further action. Rumors have been flying that the governor will announce his own referendum as early as September.

COMMUNITIES OF COLOR WEIGH IN

That still leaves the problem of divided forces. The most profound and troubling evidence of a fundamental split came 12 days after the the Alliance Steering Committee memo. A June 24 climate justice open letter signed by leaders of eight Alliance member groups representing communities of color outright opposed I-732 on the grounds of equity and inclusiveness. The signers represent Got Green, Puget Sound SAGE, One America, Washington Community Action Network, Asian-Pacific Islanders Coalition, El Centro de la Raza and the Latino Community Fund.

The groups object to the way I-732 allocates carbon revenues. The initiative is dubbed “revenue-neutral” because it recycles all carbon revenues to tax cuts and credits. The state sales tax is reduced one percent. A tax credit of up to $1,500 is funded for each of the state’s 400,000 lowest income families. The business & occupation tax on manufacturers is eliminated. All the measures are intended to balance higher energy prices. The theory is that if carbon revenues are recycled, people will respond to the market disincentive of higher energy costs by spending on other items. A $30/ton revenue-neutral carbon tax has appeared to reduce transportation fuel use around 10 percent in British Columbia.

By contrast, communities of color leaders say, carbon revenues should be spent ensuring an equitable and a just transition from fossil fuels. A “Principles for Climate Justice” statement signed by the same groups last year was a clear precursor to the conflict, forecast by Cascadia Planet in a Nov. 25, 2014 post, “Climate justice in collision with revenue-neutral carbon policies?.”

The statement read, “Racial equity must be at the center of policies that address climate change . . . Revenue . . . should be invested directly in lower-income communities, indigenous communities and communities of color so that the economic benefits outweigh the policy’s economic burdens . . . The highest priority for reinvestment must be to mitigate financial costs of implementation to communities with lower incomes. Further reduce our reliance on fossil fuels. Create clean, living wage jobs that open pathways for people with lower-incomes, people of color, and local residents to enter the green industry workforce. Enable people to live where they work with access to clean transportation, an affordable place to live, and clean and secure food sources.”

The June 24 letter echoed those statements: “This past January we helped form an inclusive statewide coalition with a mission that includes equity, the Alliance for Jobs and Clean Energy. Our diverse coalition includes faith, families, health, labor, business, and justice communities calling for action to reduce pollution, create green jobs, and invest in communities of color and lower incomes . . . Carbon Washington’s Initiative 732, crafted without inclusive input, fails to equitably reinvest revenue from pricing carbon pollution. It relies on a flat payout using the same regressive sales tax structure that has made our state dead last in fairness.”

To be balanced, the failed Inslee climate package supported by the Alliance and its member groups fell substantially short of the “Principles for Climate Justice,” without significant funds for green jobs or renewable energy, a minimal amount for affordable housing, and a transportation funding proposal that would have devoted far more to road maintenance than transit and other auto alternatives. It is expected, though, that a measure going to a public ballot will take a different shape than one designed to pass a legislative gauntlet.

I-732 defenders have their own equity argument. The sales tax cut would balance higher energy prices, while the currently unfunded Working Families Tax Credit would tip benefits to lower-income groups.

Bauman maintains, “. . . the household impact of the carbon tax and the sales tax reduction offset each other: most households will pay a few hundred dollars a year more for fossil fuels and a few hundred dollars a year less for everything else.”

At the same time, the Working Families Tax Credit would reduce the unfair tax burden on the 400,000 lowest income families with children. Writes Bauman, ” . . . funding the Working Families Rebate at a 25% level would provide the greatest improvement to the progressivity of the Washington State tax system since the sales tax exemption on groceries was passed at the ballot in 1977.”

The question of which policy design will bring the greatest benefits to disadvantaged communities remains in debate. Nonetheless, the considerable moral authority of communities of color has been brought to bear on the issue. The rift is real and all the more difficult to heal because it is ideological.

PUTTING IT ALL TOGETHER

The issue between CarbonWA and the Alliance might be mapped as centrist versus center-left.

CarbonWA and similar revenue-neutral advocates argue that measures which add new costs to grow the size of government will drive away centrist voters – Overcoming voters’ traditional aversion to voting new revenues will be overcome only if revenues are fully recycled back to them. The challenge is that skeptical voters might not believe they will really see the money.

The Alliance takes the position that just transition will require greater public sector efforts funded by carbon revenues, and that such programs will be needed to draw good voter turnout from low-income and people of color communities. The group also points out that low-income people without children will gain far less from the families tax credit.

Another way of drawing the distinction is less about ideology and more about makeup and organizing models.

While the Alliance claims membership of 125 groups of all shapes and sizes, its core is composed of professional advocacy groups, labor unions and progressive businesses. The Steering Committee is listed here.

CarbonWA, though it has a skeletal campaign staff, is more a volunteer-driven outfit that has drawn in local community climate groups and organized additional local chapters. It does have a board with several Washington state political veterans such as Bill Finkbeiner, former State Senate majority leader, and a heavy-hitter advisory board including a number of economists, who tend to like carbon taxes over cap-and-trade. The line-up is here. The initiative is also endorsed by several figures from the progressive side of state politics including Seattle City Councilmember Nick Licata, former Mayor Mike McGinn, and former County Executive Ron Sims.

The obvious question is whether these differing tendencies and positions can pull together by November 2016. Can the fractures of 2015 heal by 2016?

Some of the answers will start to arrive in fall. CarbonWA expects most of its signatures will be gathered by the end of October. In a practical sense, that means it must accumulate roughly twice the number of names in the last three months of the campaign as it did in the first three months to assure enough qualified signatures. That will be a tough haul, but the campaign has built momentum and a large army of signature gatherers.

If I-732 fails, the question will be whether this citizen energy will flow to another initiative campaign. Signature gathering for any measure announced by the Alliance or the governor this fall will take place next year. It will have money to hire paid signature gatherers, so will have less need for volunteers. Nonetheless, without a lot of grassroots enthusiasm, it is hard to see any ballot measure surviving the deluge of fossil fuel opposition money. Most I-732 supporters will likely vote for any carbon pricing initiative. But will the fractiousness of this year dampen enthusiasm for deeper engagement?

If I-732 succeeds in ballot placement, the danger is that the fractures opened up in 2015 continue through until election day 2016. The best that can be done is to state the questions. If it is the only initiative, will the controversy this year depress enthusiasm among constituencies critical for passage? If there are dueling initiatives, will the tone of the debate be respectful or fractious? The wisest course in that scenario would be to set aside conflicts and advocate for an all-of-the-above strategy.

I have thought long and hard about the CarbonWA-Alliance conflict, and confess I am of divided mind. Personally, I lean toward the kind of investments for which the “Principles for Climate Justice” call. The title of my blog post says it, “Beyond Market Fundamentalism: The Climate War Requires Public Purpose and Investment.” Carbon frameworks that rely purely on the market-tipping effects of carbon pricing will not alone be sufficient to achieve the rapid and dramatic carbon emissions reductions for which science calls. Scientist James Hansen, who has lined out the needed reductions scenario and is also a preeminent advocate of revenue-neutral carbon taxes, himself acknowledges, “Although a carbon fee is the sine qua non for phasing out emissions, the urgency of slowing emissions also implies other needs including widespread technical cooperation in clean energy technologies.” (See Conclusions.) In other words, Apollo Project-scale or greater funding.

At the same time, a carbon price in itself is vital and CarbonWA’s $25/ton tax is an important first step. If I-732 were enacted, it would only be the beginning. The need for deep carbon reductions demands further steps. Future carbon revenues beyond the $25/ton figure could conceivably be devoted to carbon-reducing investments. The important consideration is to put a stake in the ground and give citizens familiarity with carbon pricing, whether through I-732 or an alternative measure proposed by the Alliance or the governor. To this point the I-732 campaign has been the only game in town, has built a deep-rooted network of enthusiastic volunteers, and has provided a way to spur the climate conversation at a grassroots level, engaging well over 100,000 people on the streets by now. That kind of engagement will be needed to pass any initiative, and CarbonWA is currently generating it.

WEIGHING THE ODDS

The ultimate test is viability at the ballot box. The bottom line question is – Can anything pass? Is Washington capable of enacting the first state-level carbon pricing in the world by popular vote?

The 2006 vote on I-937 provides a parallel, and leaves a troubling message. After many years of frustration seeking to pass a renewable electricity standard in the legislature, clean energy advocates went to the ballot box to enact a requirement for a 15% new renewable energy share in the state. Running up against utility industry charges the measure would increase electrical bills, the measure squeaked by with only 51.73%. In the case of a carbon pricing measure energy costs will indisputably increase. That is, in fact, the point.

Two strategies are in play to overcome this hurdle. CarbonWA seeks to bring in moderates and centrist voters with its revenue-neutral policy, and hoping they will believe it’s not a bait-and-switch. The Alliance is seeking to unify and turn out progressive constituencies with just transition funding. While I am philosophically more in tune with the position carbon revenues should fund energy transition, I have concerns there may be some strategic hubris in the circle-the-progessive-wagons approach. They center on the likely angle of attack opposition forces will employ.

It is easy to see it coming – “Seattle liberals want to impose new energy taxes on you, pushing up your gas and power bills to create yet another social program.” The targets will be suburban, rural and working class voters who already feel economically stressed, are alienated from the political establishment, and do not see benefits coming their way. The kind of voters Tim Eyman seeks to draw. It is not a pretty political reality, but it is a political reality,

Pulling a large margin in King County, the state’s largest, will be crucial to passing anything statewide. Even with climate impacts coming to Eastern Washington, a climate measure will still get creamed there, as well as in the Republican-leaning Southwest corner of the state. Margins in other Puget Sound and Westside counties will be narrower, so piling up a landslide victory in King County is the key to victory.

Important lessons are to be found in the April 2014 King County Proposition 1 vote to increase transit services. It asked voters to approve a 0.1 percent sales tax increase and a $60 annual car tab fee for 10 years. The vote saw Seattle vote 2-1 in favor, but the measure lost by an eight-percent margin. Seattle political consultant Ben Anderstone maps the results here. In urban areas where transit is a more viable option – such as the core of Seattle – the measure won big. It was crushed by suburban voters who could not see much of a direct benefit to them, and did not want to pay more for car tabs. Seattle was ultimately forced back to conduct its own successful transit funding vote.

Voters not seeing their direct interest is the danger any climate ballot measure faces. One which adds to the overall tax burden might face a steeper climb, especially if the benefits seem to be flowing elsewhere. Of course, we all have an interest in recovering a stable climate, and perhaps the intensification of climate impacts in Washington can put a measure over the top. The crux will be whether voters see the benefit of increasing their energy bills in order to protect the climate.

At this point, the best that can be said is the matter is in uncertainty, and a fractured climate movement does not improve the odds. The hope is that whatever measure or measures make it to the 2016 ballot, the movement will have re-gained sufficient unity and voters will be sufficiently motivated by climate impacts they see happening in their state and world to vote in carbon pricing. Washington state will make history if they do. But the obstacle course on the way is steep and deeply pitted.

Patrick Mazza is a Lake Union writer. This article is a cross post from his blog, Cascadia Planet.